


Fifty Thousand Dollars

by Aicosu



Category: Red Dead Redemption
Genre: A mystery, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Arthur POV, Arthur x oc, Awkward Flirting, Awkward Sexual Situations, Bad Flirting, Canon Compliant, Character Study, Damsels in Distress, F/M, Honorable Arthur, I dont like mary linton but I like arthur and romance, Moderate burn, So here we are, clemens point camp, good times only, just fun romance, no death either fuck it, no mary linton in this universe, no one is dead or gonna die, slow burn but faster hahaha, some gun shooting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-04
Updated: 2019-01-04
Packaged: 2019-10-04 09:32:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,285
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17302133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aicosu/pseuds/Aicosu
Summary: Arthur takes up a bounty in hopes of getting a lot of money and gets trouble instead.





	Fifty Thousand Dollars

Taking up bounties wasn't something he was especially fond of. Something about being bountified as well made the whole idea just a rotten taste in his mouth. It made him a hypocrite. That was the word. Or just a bastard.

But fifty thousand dollars was a lot of money.

It was three Dutch Van der Linde’s at least. And a dozen of himself.

At first, he thought he’d read it wrong, mistaken the circle for a curve. Fifty dollars was more likely and in itself nothing to laugh at. He’d be tempted by that alone.   
  
But after wrapping the reins to the post and taking off his hat for a better look, the number of zeros didn’t change.

Fifty thousand.

He whistled, before covering his mouth and glancing down the sides of the streets in case anyone was paying mind. Not that it was a secret or suspicious.

In fact, why was it?

With a reward this large, why wasn’t everyone scrambling to find one…  _Rawson_ ? Why hadn’t he heard of it before? Why were the Pinkertons wasting their time on them when this was tacked up?  
  
He snapped the poster off the wall.

Maybe it was because it was off the side of the tobacco store in Saint Dennis of all places, where people didn't seem to notice the happenings in _that sort_ of the world. His sort of world.

Or maybe it was because there was no picture. Just a seal of the country flag, rippling behind an angry looking eagle and ‘NATIONAL BUREAU OF CRIMINAL IDENTIFICATION’ circling the glimmery looking symbols. Glimmery. He rubbed his glove over the seal and felt the emboss rustle beneath the leather.  
  
Hell, even the paper was expensive.

“Must have been something else, Rawson.” He said, huffing the words before trying to roll the poster carefully. It was nice after all, nice enough for writing on or… but once it dented under his thumb, he opted for folding it as evenly as he could instead.  
  
Good enough for paper alone if not information. 

* * *

It ran through his mind as he picked out Dutch’s cigars, and buying John’s shoe polish. And again when he stopped by the market square for Tilly’s new needles.

“For the machine?”  
  
“Just the….” He lifted his fingers, measuring out the length and nodding. “Mending ones, I think.”  
  
“Handstitching?” She asked, sliding out the drawer but staring at him.  
  
Arthur swallowed. “Yes ma’am, I think so.”  
  
“You think so, or you know?”

He looked at the floor before answering, lowering his hat to relieve himself from the woman’s stare. “She ain’t got no machine so, I reckon you’s—”  
  
“What’s she mending? Gloves and chaps?”  
  
“Just socks and dresses and—”  
  
“Then it’s hand stitching.” Her hand went to her hip in a way he recognized Susan’s often did when she was starting to get cross. “I’ve got several different lengths of those though, sharps, ballpoints, quilting, so if you aren’t sure—”  
  
“Can I just get one or two of each then?” He said quickly, “I’m sure that’s… that will be enough.”  
  
It was five dollars, which, for something as small and fragile as sewing needles, seemed like a swacked-up crime. He had half a mind to tell the woman so but he’d cornered himself into the scheme and she seemed to know much _much_ more about the topic then he did.

So what did he know.

He paid her his only five dollar bill and tried to imagine what ten thousand five dollar bills looked like.

“Shame bout that uh…Rawson character, no?” He asked, taking the small box of needles she slid to him and talking over the clang of her register.  
  
“Excuse me?” She asked loudly.  
  
“Nothing, ah, thank you miss.”  
  
“Sir.”

* * *

After another hour or more and he figured no one actually knew about the bounty or Rawson. The poster was looking and more like something a sham had made to put up and then laugh at when cowpoke’s like him came to take it down, drooling like foxes into fox traps.

He was actually getting kind of angry about the whole thing until he realized he just hadn’t been asking the right kind of people.

“Rawson, you mean Herschel Rawson?”

“Who?”

It would be Josiah’s contact who’d know the details. He had a habit of hanging around others who also thought they knew more than anyone. That gang included.  
  
“Oh, you know, Wheeler and Rawson.” The clerk wiggled his fingers in an arc like it meant something. “The greatest merchandise at the greatest prices and fastest shipping!”

Arthur looked behind him, just in case, but he was the only one in the wine house.

“Did the chap want French or French Canadian?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “French probably.”  
  
“I’ve think I’ve got a chardonnay from Runes!”  
  
“You were saying.” He pushed, watching the man shift through the racks of bottles.  
  
“I wasn’t! You were, you were asking me about the Rawson daughter.”  
  
Arthur glared at the back of the man’s head. He talked like Trelawny too. The finer, cleaner suits that walked the city with not an eye in passing to him that wasn’t downward even when he was sitting on a horse taller than their hats.  
  
“They had a home here you know, down past Le Blanc. Herschel was known for traveling with suitcases full of raucous ideas.”

A house somewhere here. Would a bounty be stupid enough to hide in plain sight like the gang often did?  
  
“I bet the lack of the _feminine_ derided that one. Especially once Herschel had died. Death does that to people let alone women.” He continued, but Arthur was staring at his hands on the counter. “But I suppose with all that money and all that name, something bad was bound to happen eventually. Terrible it had to be such an obnoxious thing.”  
  
“What’s terrible?” He asked clueing back in as the man began clanking down the bottles into a crate.  
  
“Four or…?”  
  
“I don’t know. What’s terrible?”  
  
“Four on me then, tell the chap I’m owed something tasty the next time he’s by for Bridge.” The crate slide over and Arthur yanked it with a little too much force. He received a cringe so deep the man’s mustache looked uneven. “Oh…oh, well, you know, the whole thing. The train station. Those children.”  
  
“What do you mean?”

The man frowned. “Oh. You were asking because you didn’t know.”

Arthur continues to wait as the man’s expression changes to something like excitement, leaning across the counter and lowering his voice, as if the place were full to bursting with more than the ache of empty wood.

“It’s said she gathered more dynamite blocks than even a whole ten mines could ever put to use, just, utter excess, thousands worth,”  
  
“Uh huh.” He nodded, trying to speed up a sentence that wasn’t his own.  
  
“and crated them into the New York Western in the dead of night, like a devil in a dress, blowing it to pieces with the morning boarding parties before the train even arrived. Hysteria they say!”  
  
“Robbery.” He nodded, but the man was shaking his head.  
  
“No! No robbery. Just carnage.”  
  
Suddenly the place did feel empty. Cold too.  
  
“It killed nearly forty I’m told. Men, women, children. They say they pulled tiny little coffins from the wreckage for three whole days. You can bet the government came knocking on Rawson’s door when it got out her name was on all that blood.”  
  
“And she’s on the run then.”  
  
“Rawson’s estate’s are foreclosed by Central so it seems that way. I imagine the shareholders at Wheeler and Rawson want the devious lady dead so as not to spread bad taste in their wares. Like I said, obnoxious, really.”

Well, that would be it then. A fifty thousand dollar crime.  
  
Nothing to laugh at.

* * *

He didn’t actually have a lot of questions about it, aside from where the hell Le Blanc street was.

But he wouldn’t have time to visit anyway, he’d need to make it to the docks before the auction closed on fish, something Pearson had harked him for the entire time he’d been making his errand list.

He was able to get a few Steelheads, packing their paper up in the back of his saddle with the wine crate, jerry-rigged in a way fancy french grapery probably shouldn’t be. With that, the cigar box, the polish and needles — he’d have no storage room for runaway daughters or 50 thousand in cash.

He’d have to come back.

The entire ride along the track he wondered how far out New York was from Roanoke, let alone Laymone, and the chances of finding someone between all that _space._

It would probably be nill. A waste of time. And he’d copper that bet but….

50 thousand was still a lot of money.

“Thank you, Mr. Morgan.” Pearson nodded, rolling the fish out from their ties from the back of his horse even as he barely made it to the posts. He waved him off, patting the mare’s neck on the way down to settle her startle.  
  
Dinner must be in a rush.  
  
“Is that my wine? Well, good on you Arthur!”  
  
He didn’t have to look back to picture that weasel grin from Trelawny, instead he just shook his head as he wrestled the crate from the back of the saddle, further upsetting his poor horse.

“Sorry, Girl, just a minute.”  
  
“Did you get any leads from Mr. Winston while you were there?”  
  
“In a manner of speakin’.” He grumbled, hoisting the wine crate under his arm. “Where you want ‘em, Josiah.”  
  
Trelawny’s hands were raised as if he’d been expecting the weight, before flinging in a gesture behind him. “To my abode, if you would Arthur!”  
  
He followed after him through camp, keeping his step a bit quick to level his eyes at the man’s profile.  
  
“Josiah.”  
  
“Yes, Arthur?”  
  
“Do you know anything about a feller named Rawson?”  
  
“Rawson.” He squinted, mouth shifting from side to side. “Timothy Rawson from Virginia? Or do you mean Jack Rawson?”  
  
He near hissed at both Trelawney’s exhaustive mind and his own apparent lack of one. He’d already forgotten what the damn wine tender had said.  
  
“One on Le Blanc street.”  
  
“I don’t think I—”  
  
“He’s some big name I think, and his daughter-”  
  
“Wheeler and Rawson!” Trelawny suddenly said, with a snap so loud Bill jerked from his seat at the table as they passed him.  
  
“Yeah, that’s the—”  
  
“Come now Arthur, everyone knows Wheeler and Rawson. The greatest products at the greatest prices!”  
  
He didn’t, but if everyone was supposed to, that further explained the amount of money the government would spend to get them in jail..

“And his daughter?”  
  
“Does Wheeler have one?”  
  
“ _Rawson_ , Josiah, I’m askin’ about Rawson.”  
  
“Just there by my linens, will you? I want to dole them out as complementaries for the passport clerks. Buttering up with a widow’s butter as it were, ha!”  
  
He was honestly confused by the sudden requests until he realized he was still carrying the wine, and they’d reached the small tenting Grimshaw had set up for the man. He found the spot and hurried to set it down.  
  
“I don’t know of any daughters I’m afraid, but I do know that if you're making any deals with Wheeler and Rawson you better just say yes to anything they offer. That’s top dollar business. They bought out my good friend Samuel’s mixture for vapor tonics and now he’s retired in Boise.”  
  
He hummed. He wasn’t really sure if he was supposed to say anything. Trelawny might have lost him back at the horse.

“Why do you ask Arthur? Got ideas for fish bait ingredients?”  
  
“I guess.” He had no idea what that meant.  
  
But Trelawny was laughing, happy and snappy like, and it made him smile even if the man was obviously full of himself and the sound his own voice made. He wiped his eye before patting Arthur on the shoulder.  
  
“I looked forward to it my boy, look forward to it! Thank you for my wine.”  
  
“Sure.”

He left him to it, finally giving a small breath at having made it back. Even if it was dark, there was something nice about seeing trees instead of lampposts.  
  
He delayed the rest of his deliveries only to set up the Girl next to the feed and water, raking gloves through the bits of mane caught in her face, before heading for Dutch’s tent.  
  
He’d need permission anyhow.  
  
John was on the way though.  
  
“Ay.” He grunted.

John looked up from the dirt, sitting at the fire with a bottle in his mouth, and scrambling when the shoe polish came at him in a fast throw. He caught it with an awkward stretch.  
  
The bottle sloshed a little down his knuckles as he sat again, turning the tin over in the other hand.  
  
“The hell is this for Arthur?”  
  
“Ahhh.” He groaned, scratching his brow to pointedly _not_ look at the whitening scuffs on John’s black boots and kept walking.

Hosea was there too, as it happened. Both men sat quietly at the table with a deck of cards between them and some flat hands.  
  
“Arthur.” Hosea smiled.  
  
Dutch glanced up briefly before curling his fingers at the box.  
  
Arthur set it down carefully, sliding it over.  
  
“Look at this grain Hosea, Elm.” Dutch ran his fingers over the seams. Hosea looked but didn’t move. Arthur leaned in a little to see it. “That city seems to have everything.”  
  
“It’s a far ride,” Hosea said simply.  
  
“It’s fine,” Arthur assured.  
  
“Have one with us, boy.” Dutch shuffled a cigar to Hosea and himself before waving one at him.

He shook his head. “No, I gotta… I have something for Tilly I—”  
  
“They got a capper in here too.” Dutch continued, putting away the offer and pulling out the snip for the ends. He cut them and Arthur pulled a match from his belt to light both men’s smokes.

“Thank you, Arthur.”  
  
“Thank you.”  
  
“Sure.”

He watched them play another hand, leaning over an empty chair to silently observe, rolling the spent match in his gloved fingers idly.

“Ante.”  
  
“Fold.”  
  
“No guts, no glory Hosea.”  
  
“No good cards, Dutch.”

“Ha!”  
  
“How many days is North, Hosea?” He asked quietly, trying his best to not eye Dutch as he did.  
  
“North!” Dutch shouted, pulling in the empty ammo casings they used for chips. The sound rattled against the table.  
  
Hosea was looking up at the brim of his hat in soft thought.  
  
“If you mean to the coast… More than a week. Two.”  
  
“North where?”  
  
“New York.”  
  
“You leaving us, boy?”  
  
Arthur was already shaking his head. “No, no I just was … working out a bit of information is all.”  
  
Dutch paused in his new deal, folding the cards inward to look up at him.  
  
“You got a lead today?”  
  
Arthur’s hands delved into his coat to pull at the back of his neck.  
  
“No. I dunno.” It was quiet. They were both looking at him now. “Maybe.”  
  
“Take Micah with you wherever it—”  
  
“No, Dutch, I’m not—”  
  
“He’s fast with the draw and if you’re heading to New York—”  
  
“I’m _not_ headed to New York.” He pressed, leveling his gaze evenly with Dutch. “I’m not. Like I said it’s… it’s probably nothing. And if it’s something, it’s nothing I want to make a week or more out of.”  
  
“How long?” Hosea asked, pulling the rest of the cards needed for his hand from Dutch’s pile.  
  
“I’ll look into it tomorrow and, most likely I’ll be back for dinner when it turns out to be nothing. But a few days. That’s all.”

“If you pass through Penn Union you send a telegram to let us know.”  
  
“Yeah, sure.” He nodded absently. It was a good reminder, but he didn’t want to ever be that far from camp. Money or no money.

“And Micah—”  
  
“I promise, Dutch, if it’s something, I will come for Micah.”  
  
Dutch hummed, but he was looking at his cards, seemingly once more disinterested.

He stayed to watch Hosea fold two more times, before taking all of Dutch’s earnings once got a little too comfortable and bet it all. Hosea was smiling softly as he dragged the spent bullets into his lap.

Then he headed for bed, but not before stopping by Tilly and slipping the needles out from his satchel.  
  
“Why Arthur, how thoughtful! You didn’t have to go and do that!”  
  
“It’s nothin’.” He replied automatically, taking off his hat to brush a hand through his hair and to avoid looking at the girl’s too-bright smile for being in a two-horse camp.  
  
It turned out the five dollars paid more for her happy reaction than the needles themselves and he was fine with it. It made him less sore.  
  
But 50 thousand would mean a lot more of that though, wouldn’t it?

* * *

Le Blanc street was pretty quiet as far as Saint Dennis went. It was far past the warehouses and shops, further still than the apartments and midtown houses.

It was in the neighborhoods paved in white cobblestone, with gated off greenery, single mailboxes at each arch, and little to no garbage in even the gutters.

It felt strangely out of place to ride a horse through it, where mansions towered on either side of him like canyon walls but… clean. Columned. He ended up getting off and hitched the Girl in a nearby park. Whispering a quiet warning to her not to eat all the daisies there, he stole away on foot through a nearly empty square. Nearly, anyway.

The street sweep kindly pointed him around the corner to the Rawson estate, and he tried to approach it as unsuspiciously as a man in spurs and a gun at his hip could.

It was definitely abandoned.  
  
If not a sure sign by the letter nailed to the closed up fence, the overgrown fauna and boarded windows did the telling.  
  
He placed his hands on either side of notice first, squinting down at the document warped a bit from time and weather.

‘NOTICE OF FORECLOSURE. The American Bureau of Land and Agriculture hereby rescinds the property of Hersch—’

Arthur sighed, eyes dropping down the text to look for something else.

‘As of February 19th, 1899,—”  
  
Almost a year ago now?  
  
Well, shit.  
  
He folded the paper up into sections and slipped it into the satchel, placing his hands firmly on the fence, and hoisted himself over with a quick move, all the while silently stacking more odds against him that this job was anything but a lost cause.

He claps his hands of dust, eyeing the neighborhood around him.

Nill.

Which was a good thing because the front door was boarded up with a repeat of the same notice. As was the servant's doors, side doors, and porch door. So up the ivy lattice, he went, wondering how long it would take for a neighborly housewife to call the lawmen once she looked out her tea room to catch an outlaw breaking into mansions.  
  
“Please, not today.” He whispered to the second story window, pressing his shoulder against the glass and hefting it open. It was a side hatch, and they were usually pretty easy to jimmy the locks off so long as he didn’t—  
  
The glass broke.  
  
“Shit.”  
  
He considered, once more looking around, before sliding his glove inside and unlocking the latch to let himself in. He’d at least have just a few minutes. That was enough to find information. Or hogtie a dolled up devil, as it were.

He didn’t have to though, it was pretty obvious if she was even still alive and on the run after all this time, she at least wasn't here.

The house was filled with ghosts. White sheets draping what furniture was left; couches and armoires, or just strewn across the floor as if someone had already been by to steal and pillage everything. Maybe the Feds themselves. They liked doing that kinda stuff ‘legally.’

All the rooms were the same, ghostly and empty. He could tell it had been a right proper place though. Rich, expensive, nice. It had desk drawers in the hallways just for flowers. That kind of money.

Maybe that’s why he felt okay slipping some silverware into his satchel as he left the parlor to the office. Or why he snapped a match to light a cigarette once he found a brand of his favorite Carroll’s strewn over the paperwork there.  
  
If the lawmen did come, he could probably get to Girl before they could get to him.  
  
He inhaled the burn, exhaling it out again as he waved the match to a snuff. Leaning back on the desk, he looked around the more trophy-like room the office seemed to be.

And then he froze.

“Wheeler.” He said at the framed pictures of the wall. Advertisements. “And. Rawson.”  
  
‘The GREATEST supply route on EARTH!’ The advertisement yelled back at him in etched lettering.  
  
“Well… shit.” He breathed, smoke curling around his vision as it fell to the shelving below the frames. A whole bonafide collection of product catalogs. Yearly ones that seemed to date back to 1820.

No wonder Trelawny and his ‘chap’ thought he was slow. Of course, he knew the damn Wheeler and Rawson, he’d flipped through the goddamn thing about a thousand times since he’d been old enough to be sent to the grocer for sweet corn cans. Susan had about two of them catalogs lying around camp somewhere and— _hell_ , he’d ordered John’s fucking shoe polish from it before picking it up just yesterday.  
  
His fist rubbed into his forehead in exhaustion and punishment. Stupid fool.

It wasn’t entirely his fault, he reasoned, even as he crushed his cigarette, lost on the reward of the smoke. It’s not like he paid any attention to the details of the damn books when he was busy looking for the right bait and tackle Charles asked for. Or the coffee Susan liked. Not like he read… the book itself.  
  
That sounded worse.  
  
He slid one of the years off the shelf and flipped through it, already recognizing the familiar look of the drawings. Guns and produce and a few hats.  
  
Rawson.  
  
No wonder the woman was worth that much money. It was probably pennies to what the folks who ran the company made, but enough to show they wanted their problem taken care of. And quickly.  
  
It also was no wonder that the government was involved. Not just cause of dead kids. But one of their own who’d done it. No outlaw, but a business type. A cog in the machine, or something.

He put the book back, leaving it there to its fellows and the dust.

There wasn’t much more of a revelation in between the lines of all the paperwork in the office. Or maybe there was and he just couldn’t make sense of it. It was all business stuff. Money talk or company talk. A letter from a Tallason steel factory about delays, a receipt for a few oil wagons for a fellow named Don, and ledgers and ledgers of money in columns that had numbers Arthur didn’t think he’d ever get the chance to write himself. Numbers like 32,500. Or 785 dollars and forty-five cents. For lead piping. Who’d of thought.

It took only a book or two before he shuffled them into a mess with a pent-up, “Argh!”  
  
The job was getting more and more useless, or maybe over his head. Out of his league.  
  
He folded some of the receipts and letters in his satchel anyway and made his way downstairs.

Or he was going to.  
  
Well, well.  
  
The portrait was about as tall as the wall itself. Almost like it was made to measure for the stairs landing. Probably was.  
  
He never did understand how artists got it to look so flat and so thick at the same time. Paint always looked that way to him. Creamy. Like butter. The one time Arthur got his hands on paint it had been a mess. He’d sworn off the too-watery, too-lumpy, too-dry madness almost immediately. Besides, he’d learned he didn’t know anything about color.  He barely knew anything about the pencil, really.  
  
He took two steps at a time to get a bit closer, looking up now to see the figures right.  
  
That’s how you really knew if people had money. Paintings instead of pictures.  
  
It must have been them. The Rawsons.  
  
And at first, he thought it was Mr. and Ms. But the man, sitting humbly in a chair with a cane, looking back with a downturned expression and thick, white brows; was older. Older than maybe Hosea, while the woman behind him looked young. Wrapped in a painted shawl that looks more like a sheen of veneer than fabric. Her hands rested over each other on the back of his chair as a lady’s would.  
  
The daughter then.  
  
Or heck, grandparents of some kind maybe, but he’d put even a little money that it wasn’t.  
  
He loitered for a minute, eyes glazing over looking at the details. The wrinkles in the man’s shirt collar near the button. The trim along the ruffles of her dress. The shiny ringlets in her pinned up hair.  
  
He supposed taking a photograph of a painting would be a little backward. Especially since the camera was in his saddlebags, not his satchel. And he wasn’t sure if he had any plates left for it anyway.

He considered his hunting knife and the height of the frame up, but it wasn’t so much the space to carry it as it was that it was too damn wide to bother referencing it on this already stumped-footed search.

So instead he tried to stare at the face of her. Tried to remember the wide eyes and large ears. Or the shape of her hairline so he might catch it even at a distance or if she was running.  
  
And then he felt like an even bigger fool than he had about the catalog, when he looked down at the side table below the painting to find a smaller drawing, framed and sitting pretty. It was even labeled in fancy script;  ‘ _Miss C. Rawson._ ’  
  
He snatched it quickly, glaring as he broke off the wood backing, pointedly not looking at the portrait anymore as he finished his descent down to the entrance. He tossed the frame at the floor with a crack and slid the picture in with the rest of his findings.

He didn’t need any more embarrassment from the place, he could easily do that on his own.

* * *

“Looking for a good time, then?”

Arthur felt his skin heat like he was outside and not in the saloon.

“N-no, this, she’s wanted, Ma’am,”

The woman chuckled, arching her neck to glance at the cameo. “Aren’t most of us?”

“Have you seen her around or not?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“And the name don’t mean nothing to you?”

“Name?” She wasn’t looking at him anymore, she was peering past his hat at the new men coming in the door.

“Ah… nevermind then.” He flipped the painting in his hands and left. She probably didn’t even notice.

Outside he unwrapped the reins from the hitch with building frustration. For someone so rich and well known, no one seemed to know nothing about 'em.

He’d tried the street sweeps, the barber, the stables, the paper, and the bar, and now the sun was at its peak before setting. At this rate, it would be a wasted day and a long ride back just to find everyone asleep when he got there.

He had only gotten the same story told a few ways. Crazy lady blew up a city, sad woman set a train station on fire, young girl tried to rob a train but did it wrong — it seemed to change depending on who was tellin' it. As did the body count. Twenty, fifty, a hundred people.

But no one knew where she was now or where she might be. Arguably the most important detail when trying to claim a fifty thousand dollar bounty.

It was almost like yesterday all over again, asking the wrong—  
  
Damn.

He was asking the wrong people.

Who the right people _would be_ was a harder question. Rich people, probably. People who’d worked with the father. Business owners.

Arthur didn’t really know how to get a hold of any of them.

But there was one place…

“Yes! That’s Herschel Rawson’s daughter. They have a house here in town you know.”

Arthur leaned further across the grocer’s counter, brushing an elbow past a licorice jar, and trying to make sure his features didn’t show anything about having been in said house a few hours ago.

“You know about her.” It wasn’t a question, and he could feel gratitude when the man began nodding.

“I heard all about that grizzly tale. Sad really, but not unexpected. She was alone after he died.”

“Uh huh.” He looked down at the cameo in his hands and the turned, almost profile of a sharp-chinned woman with curls dancing by her ears. He wasn’t sure if she looked sad at this angle. “You seen her around then?”

“She represented some of our facilities.” The grocer stood back to cross his arms. “I’d see her quarterly for inspection.”

“Dropping off books?”

The man looked confused.

"No. You mean the catalogs, no—Herschel owned that company but his main haul was investment. Backing the money for bright ideas. Like rubber soles or apple peelers.”

“So she was…” Arthur trailed. He had no idea really.

“She may have helped him with his deals, I don’t know, but after he died she became a Procure on her own.” He sniffed before shoving his thumb behind him. “I meant the glass for my windows. And the signage. She arranged that for us.”

“Procure.” He repeated.

“Yes, a Procure.”

They stared at each other.

The grocer hummed before continuing slowly. “You know... a liaison… you hire them to find supplies for things you might not know about. A dentist, maybe, might need his plumbing fixed but… he’s a dentist so—”

“So he’d hire Ms Rawson.” Arthur nodded. Understanding. He considered the painting before replacing it.

“Yes sir, good at it too she was, probably with all the contacts she met under her father.” His brows lifted in a way that seemed more thoughtful. Sad. “Makes sense why getting so much dynamite was as easy for her as baking a pie.”    
  
They were quiet then. Arthur staring at the licorice jar and the grocer sighing at the ceiling.

A bell broke their reverie, children laughing as they raced in with their mother bustling about the door.  
  
Arthur pulled from the counter, shifting on his feet, looking at the kids before the man again.  
  
“You know where she might be found?”  
  
The man didn’t seem to be surprised. He just frowned, shoulders falling.  
  
“I can’t say.”  
  
“Anywhere you might think she—” Arthur shook his head, raising a hand.

“She had set up her own office in Charleston. I don’t know if she moved there or commuted, but that’s where I sent our requisition forms.”  
  
“Thank you, sir—Thank you.” He said, stepping backward and bumping into one of the kids. The boy was laughing and smiled up at him before darting away. He chuckled, rubbing his chin before heading out.  
  
“I hope you find her.” The grocer said at his back.  
  
Arthur looked over his shoulder at him.  
  
“For her sake.”

 


End file.
